"You are getting well!" said the doctor. "I shall lose my work—and forgive me, my pleasure!"
"I will give you some better work to do, Dr. Harrison."
"What is that? Anything for you!—"
"It is not for me. That little lame child to whom you sent the rose-tree, Dr. Harrison,—she is very sick. Would you go and see her?"
"Did you think I would not?" he said rather gravely.
"I want to see her very much myself," Faith went on;—"but I suppose I could not take so long a ride yet. Could I?"
The doctor looked at her.
"I think the mother of the Gracchi must have been something such a woman!" he said with an indescribable grave comic mien;—"and the other Roman mother that saved Rome and lost her son! Or that lady of Sparta who made the affectionate request to her son about coming home from the battle on his shield! I thought the race had died out."
Faith could not help laughing. He had not been sure that she would understand his allusions, but his watchful eye saw that she did.
"Were you educated in Pattaquasset?" he said. "Pardon me!"—
All Faith's gravity returned, and all her colour too. "No, sir," she said, "I have never been educated. I am studying now."
"Studying!" said he gently. "You have little need to study."
"Why, sir?"
"There are minds and natures so rich by their original constitution, that their own free growth is a fuller and better harvest than all the schoolmasters in the world can bring out of other people."
Again Faith's cheek was dyed. "I was poor enough," she said bowing her head for a moment. "I am poor now,—but I am studying."
In which last words lay perhaps the tiniest evidence of an intention not to be poor always. A suspicious glance of thought shot from the doctor's mind. But as it had happened more than once before, the simplicity of Faith's frankness misled him, and he dismissed suspicion.
"If you want an illustration of my meaning," he went on without change of manner, "permit me to remind you that your paragon of character,—the Rhododendron—does no studying. My conclusion is plain!"
"The Rhododendron does all it can."
"Well—" said the doctor,—"it is impossible to trace the limits of the influences of mignonette."
Faith looked grave. She was thinking how very powerless her influences had been.
"Don't you see that I have made out my position?"
"No."
"What sort of studying—may I ask it?—do you favour most?" he said with a smile.
"I like all kinds—every kind!"
"I believe that. I know you have a love for chymistry, and Shakspeare, and natural history. But I should like to know Mignonette's favourite atmosphere."
"The study I like best of all is the one you like least, Dr. Harrison."
"What may that be, Miss Faith?"
"The study of the Bible."
"The Bible! Surely you know that already," he said in an interested voice.
"Did you think so?" said Faith quickly and with secret humbleness. "You made a great mistake, Dr. Harrison. But there is nothing I take such deep lessons in;—nor such pleasant ones."
"You mistake me too, Miss Faith. I do like it. You are strong enough for it to-day—I wish you would give me one of those lessons you speak of?"
"If you loved it, sir, you would not ask me. You would find them for yourself."
"Another mistake!" said the doctor. "I might love them, and yet ask you. Won't you give me one?"
She lifted to his a look so gentle and grave that he could not think she was displeased, or harsh, or even unkind. But she answered him, "No."
"Don't you feel strong enough for it?" he said with a shade of concern.
"Yes."
"You think you have given me one lesson already," he said smiling, "which I am not attending to. I will go and see your little sick child immediately. But I don't know the way! I wish you were well enough to pilot me. I can't find her by the sign of the rosebush?"
"Reuben Taylor will take you there, Dr. Harrison, if you will let him.He goes there often."
"If I will let him! Say, if he will let me! Your knight does not smile upon me, Miss Faith."
"Why not?"
"I'm sure I'm not qualified to give evidence," said the doctor half laughing at having the tables turned upon him. "Unless his chivalric devotion to you is jealous of every other approach—even mine. But you say he will guide me to the rosebush?"
"I am sure he will with great pleasure, Dr. Harrison."
"And I will go with great pleasure—for you."
He was standing before her, looking down. There was something in the look that made Faith's colour come again. She answered seriously, "No sir—not for me."
"Why not?"
"I can't reward you," said Faith; trembling, for she felt she was speaking to the point. "Do it for a better reason."
"Will you shew me a better?"
She answered instantly with a bright little smile, "'Give, and it shall be given unto you; full measure, pressed down, heaped up, and running over, shall men give into your bosom.'"
"In another world!—" said the doctor.
"No—in this. The promise stands for it."
"It's your part of this world—not mine; and unless you shew me the way, Miss Faith, I shall never get into it."—Then more gently, taking her hand and kissing it, he added, "Are you tired of trying to help me?"
Faith met his keen eye, reddened, and drooped her head; for indeed she felt weak. And her words were low and scarce steady. "I will not be tired of praying for you, Dr Harrison."
What swift electric current along the chain of association moved the doctor's next question. He was silent a minute before he spoke it; then spoke in a clear even voice. "May I ask you—is it impertinent—what first led you to this way of thinking?—Sophy says you were not always so."
The colour deepened on Faith's cheek, he saw that, and deepened more.
"The teaching is always of heaven, sir. But it came to me through the hands of the friend who was so long in our house—last year."
"And has that adventurer counselled you to trust no friend that isn't of his way of thinking?" the doctor said with some haughtiness of accent.
Faith raised her eyes and looked at him, the steady grave look that the doctor never liked to meet from those soft eyes. It fixed his, till her eyes fell with a sudden motion, and the doctor's followed them—whither? To that gloved forefinger which he had often noticed was kept covered. Faith was slowly drawing the covering off; and something in her manner or her look kept his eyes rivetted there. Slowly, deliberately, Faith uncovered the finger, and in full view the brilliants sparkled; danced and leapt, as it seemed to Faith, whose eyes saw nothing else. She did not dare look up, nor could, for a double reason. She sat like a fair statue, looking still and only at the diamond sign, while the blood in her cheeks that bore witness to it seemed the only moving thing about her. That rose and deepened, from crimson to scarlet, and from her cheeks to the rim of her hair.
She never saw the changes in her neighbour's face, nor what struggles the paleness and the returning flush bore witness to. She never looked up. She had revealed all; she was willing he should conceal all,—that he could. It was but a minute or two, though Faith's measurement made it a more indefinite time; and Dr. Harrison took her hand again, precisely in his usual manner, remarked that it was possible he might be obliged to go south in a day or two for a day or two, but that he rather thought he had cured her; and so went off, with no difference of tone that any stranger could have told, and Faith never raised her eyes to see how he looked.
CHAPTER XXV
Dr. Harrison sent away his curricle and walked home,—slowly, with his hands behind him, as if the May air had made him lazy. To any one that met him, he wore as disengaged an air as usual; his eye was as coolly cognizant of all upon which it fell, and his brow never looked less thoughtful. While his head never had been more busy. He kept the secret of his pride—he had kept and would keep it, well; no one should guess what he bore; but he bore a writhing brain and a passion that was heaving with disappointment. To no end—except to expose himself—he had worked at his mining operations all these months; nothing could be more absolute than the silence of Faith's answer; nothing could be more certain than the fixedness of her position. Against the very impassableness of the barrier the doctor's will chafed, even while his hope gave way. He ruthlessly called himself a fool for it too, at the minute. But he was unused to be baffled; and no man pursues long with such deliberate energy a purpose upon which he has set his heart, without having all the cords of his will and his passion knit at last into a cable of strength and tenacity. The doctor's walk grew slower, and his eyes fell on the ground. How lovely Faith had looked—even then, when she was putting him and herself to pain; how speakingly the crimson hues had chased each other all over her face, and neck; how shyly her eyelashes had kept their place on her cheek; with how exquisite grace her still attitude had been maintained. And withal what a piece of simplicity she was! What a contrast those superb diamonds had made with the almost quaint unadornedness of her figure in its white wrapper. A contrast that somehow was not inharmonious, and with which the doctor's artistic taste confessed itself bewitched, though Faith's only other remotest ornament was that very womanly one of her rich brown hair. A piece of simplicity? Could she be beyond his reach? With duty between,—yes; otherwise,—no! as all the doctor's experience told him. And he walked leisurely past his own door, past the houses of the village, on almost to the entrance of the woody road; then turned and came with a brisker pace back. He still called himself a fool, secretly; but he went into the library and wrote a letter. Which in course of time was received and read by Mr. Linden between two of his pieces of work.
It appeared the next day that Dr. Harrison had changed his mind, or his plans, about going south; for he came as usual to see Faith. In every sense as usual; to her astonishment no traces remained of the yesterday's conversation. The ease and kindliness of his manner had suffered no abatement, although a little touch of regretfulness, just allowed to appear, forbade her to doubt that she had been understood. Spite of herself, she could not help being presently again almost at ease with him. Nevertheless Faith wished he had gone south.
She did not feel sure that Mr. Linden would be pleased with the state of matters, as days went on, and she was sure she was not pleased herself. There was something she did not understand. The doctor's manner was not presuming, in a way; neither did he obtrude even his sorrow upon her; yet he took the place of a privileged person—she felt that—and she was obliged to see his pain in the very silence and in the play of words or of face which she thought assumed to conceal it. She was very sorry for him, and in the same breath thought she must have been wrong in something, though she could not see how, or things would never have come to such a point.
She could not guess—how could she!—that the doctor was playing a desperate game and had thrown his last stake on the chance of a flaw in Mr. Linden's confidence towards her or in hers towards him, or of a flaw in the temper of either of them, or a flaw in their pride, or affection! There are flaws in so many characters! Did but either of them lack moral courage, or truth, or trust, or common sense, like a great many of the rest of the world—and the doctor had gained his ground! For Dr. Harrison had determined that Faith's religious opinions should not stand in his way; she should think as he did, or—he would think with her!
Of all this Faith knew nothing. She had only an intuitive sense that something was not right; and doubt and annoyance kept her strength back. She lost ground again. All summed itself up in a longing for Mr. Linden to come.
Meanwhile Mr. Linden had received and read the following despatch, and studied and taught before and after it as best he might.
Pattaquasset, April, 18—.
"MY DEAR LINDEN,
I do not know what impulse prompts me to write this letter to you—A very strong one, probably, that makes fools of men—Yet even with my eyes open to this, I go on.
I have unwittingly become your rival. Not in fact, indeed, but in character. I have been so unfortunate as to love a person you are somehow concerned in—and before I knew that you had any concern of the kind. That is a very simple story, and only one to be smothered—not to be brought to open air,—were it all. But the course of the months past, which has too late brought me this knowledge of myself, has also made me believe that—had I a fair field—were there no contrary ties or fetters of conscience—I should not love in vain. What those ties are I know nothing—I have not asked—but the existence of some obligation I have been given to understand. With certain natures of truth and duty, that is a barrier impassable. You would be safe, were I to act out of honour.
I am a fool, I believe; but I am not yet such a fool as not to know that there is but one man in the world to whom I could write such a confession. Nothing better prompts it than pure selfishness, I am aware—but with me that is strong. I have that notion of you that you would not care to keep what you held only by priority of claim. I may be wrong in the supposition upon which I am going—yet it is my chance for life and I cannot yield it up. That were the lady free—in conscience as well as in fact—she might be induced to look favourably on me. I ought to add, that I believe such a consciousness has never shaped itself to her mind—the innocence with which she may at first have entered into some sort of obligation, would not lessen or alter its truth or stringency to her pure mind. The game is in your own hands, Linden—so is
Your unworthy friend
JULIUS HARRISON.
P.S.—One thing further I ought to add—that a somewhat delicate state of nerves and health, over which I have been for some time watching, would make any rash broaching of this subject very inexpedient and unsafe. I need not enforce this hint."
CHAPTER XXVI
The spring opened from day to day, and the apple blossoms were bursting. Mr. Linden might soon be looked for, and one warm May afternoon Faith went in to make his room ready. It was the first day she had been fit for it, and she was yet so little strong that she must take care of her movements. With slow and unable fingers she did her pleasant work, and then very tired, sat down in her old reading window-seat and went into a long dream-meditation. It was pleasant for a while, in harmony with the summer air and the robins in the maple; it got round at last into the train of the last weeks. A fruitless reverie ended in Faith's getting very weary; and she went back to her own room to put herself on the couch cushions and go to sleep.
Sleep held on its way after a peaceful fashion, yet not so but that Faith's face shewed traces of her thoughts. Mrs. Derrick came softly and watched her, and the spring air blew back the curtains and fanned her, and brushed her hair with its perfumed wings; and one or two honey bees buzzed in and sought honey from the doctor's flowers, and forsook them again for the fields.
Up there at last, following Mrs. Derrick, came Mr. Linden. With few reasons asked or told of his sudden appearance; with little said even of Faith's illness but the mere fact, he went up to the sunlit room and there staid. Not restingly in Faith's easy-chair, but standing by the low fire-place, just where he could have the fullest view of her. Mrs. Derrick came and went,—he never stirred. The sunbeams came and went—wrapped Faith in their bright folds and lay at his feet, then began to withdraw altogether. They had shewed him the unwontedly pale and worn face, and lit up the weary lines in which the lips lay asleep; and just when the sunbeams had left it all, Mr. Linden became aware that two dark eyes had softly opened and were gazing at him as if he were a figure in a dream. So perhaps for a minute he seemed, touched with the light as he was, which made a glorification in the brown locks of his hair and gleamed about "pleasant outlines" standing as fixed and still as a statue. But they were not statue eyes which looked into hers, and Faith's dreamlike gaze was only for a moment. Then every line of her face changed with joy—and she sprang up to hide it in Mr. Linden's arms. He stood still, holding her as one holds some rescued thing. For Faith was too weak to be just herself, and weariness and gladness had found their own very unusual expression in an outflow of nervous tears.
Something seemed to have taken away Mr. Linden's power of words. He did place her among the cushions again, but if every one of her tears had been balm to him he could not have let them flow more unchecked. Perhaps the recollection that they were tears came suddenly; for with very sudden sweet peremptoriness he said,
"Faith, hush!—Are you so glad to see me?"
She was instantly still. No answer.
"What then?" The intonation was most tender,—so, rather than by any playfulness, cancelling his own question. She raised her head, she had dismissed her tears, yet the smile with which her glance favoured him was a sort of rainbow smile, born of clouds.
"That is a very struggling and misty sunbeam!" said Mr. Linden. "Is that why I was kept out of its range so long?"
Faith's head drooped. Her forehead lay lightly against him; he could not see what sort of a smile she wore.
"Whereupon it goes into seclusion altogether. Mignonette, look up and kiss me—how much longer do you suppose I can wait for that?"
He had no longer to wait at that time, and the touch of her lips was with a tremulous gladness which was tale-telling. And then the position of the lowered head and the hand which kept its place on his shoulder shewed him that she was clinging, though with shy eagerness, like a bird that with tired wing has found her nest. With one of those quick impulses which to-day seemed to have taken the place of his usual steadiness, Mr. Linden bent down and blessed her; in words such as she never remembered from other lips. Not many indeed, but deep and strong,—as the very depth and strength of his own human and religious nature; words that stilled Faith's heart as with the shadowing of peace; so that for the time she could not wonder, but only rest. They made her tremble a moment; then she rested as if the words had been a spell. But the rest wrought action. Faith drew back presently and looked up at Mr. Linden to see how he looked. And then she could not tell. Her puzzled eyes found nothing to remark upon.
"Endy—I thought you would not be here for two or three days yet."
"It was nearly impossible. My child, when did you get sick?"
"O—a good while ago."
"'A good while,'"—Mr. Linden repeated with grave emphasis. "Well do you think it would have lengthened the time to have me come and see you?"
Faith's heart was too full, and her answer, looking down, was a tremulous, quiet and tender,
"I don't think it would."
"Then wherefore was I not permitted?"
"I didn't want you to come then."
"And again, wherefore?"
"Why you know, Endy. I couldn't want you till you were ready to come."
"I should have been most emphatically ready! What sort of medical attendance have you had?"
"Good, you know. I had Dr. Harrison."
"And he did his duty faithfully?"
"I guess he always does—his medical duty," said Faith somewhat quietly.
"Duty is a sort of whole-souled thing, to my mind," said Mr. Linden."Do you think all his ministrations did you good?"
There was pain and wonder, and even some fear in Faith's eyes as she looked at Mr. Linden.
"They ought not to have done me any harm"—she said meekly.
"Did they, Faith? I thought—" Very softly and thoughtfully his fingers came about her hair, his eyes looking at her, Faith could hardly tell how. The pain of those weeks stung her again—the sorrow and the shame and the needlessness. Faith's head sunk again upon Mr. Linden's breast, for the tears came bitterly; though he could not know that. He only knew that they came. Holding her with a strong arm—as if against some one else; soothing her with grave kisses, not with words, Mr. Linden waited for her to speak.
"Child," he said at last, "you will do yourself harm. Has he brought on this state of the nerves that he talks about? And in what possible way?"
"Don't talk about it, Endy!—" said Faith struggling for self-command—"I am foolish—and wrong—and weak. I'll tell you another time."—But Faith's head kept its position.
"Do you think I can wait, to know what has made my coming home such a tearful affair?"
"Yes. Because it's all over now."
"What is over?"
"All—that you wouldn't like."
"Faith, you talk in perfect riddles!—It is well that what I can see of this very pale little face is less puzzling. Did you tell Dr. Harrison of your claim upon me?"
"What?—" she said looking up.
"Well.—You know what that claim is. Did you tell him, Faith?"
Her eyes fell again. "Yes—at least—I shewed him my ring."
"In answer to his suit, Faith?"
"No.—He was talking as I did not like, one day."—Faith's cheeks were growing beautifully rosy.
"Was it to protect yourself, or me?" said Mr. Linden watching her.Faith's glance up and down, was inexpressibly pretty.
"Myself, I think."
"You have a strange power of exciting and keeping down my temper, at one and the same time!" said Mr. Linden. "What did he dare say to you?"
"Nothing about me. It was something—about you—which I did not choose to have him say."
Mr. Linden smiled, and called her a little crusader, but the grave look came back. Dr. Harrison had known, then, just what ties he was trying to break,—had felt sure—must have felt sure—that they were bonds of very deep love and confidence; and thereupon, had coolly set himself to sow mistrust! Mr. Linden was very silent,—the keen words of indignation that rose to his lips ever driven back and turned aside by Faith's face, which told so plainly that she could bear no excitement. He spoke at last with great deliberation.
"You may as well shew it to all Pattaquasset, Mignonette!—for allPattaquasset shall know before I have been here much longer."
"What?—why?" she said startling.
"For what you will, love. I think you need the protection of my name."
Faith could not deny it; howsoever she looked quaintly grave upon the proposition.
"Do you know how you will have to scour the country now, and make yourself as much as possible like cowslips and buttercups and primroses and mouse-ear?" said Mr. Linden smiling. "One day you may be a Spring beauty, and the next Meadow-sweet, and when I see you a wild pink I shall feel comparatively happy."
Faith with a very little laugh remarked that she did not feel as if she ever should be anything wild.
"What is your definition of wild?"
"Not tame."
"Does that meek adjective express the kind of pink you intend to be?"
"I didn't say what I should be—I only spoke of what I am."
"Shall I tell you the future tense of this very indicative mood?" he said touching her cheeks.
"If you know it!"
"If I know it!—You will be (some months later) a Linden flower!—whether wild or tame remains to be been."
Unless Linden flowers can be sometimes found a good deal deeper-coloured than pinks, there was at least very little present resemblance. The only notice Faith took of this prophecy was an involuntary one. The door softly opened at this point, and Mrs. Derrick came in to announce tea. She stood still a moment surveying them both.
"How do you think she looks, Mr. Linden?"
His eyes went back to Faith, giving a quick reply which he did not mean they should. "She looks like a dear child—as she is, Mrs. Derrick. I cannot say much more for her. But I shall take her down to tea."
Mrs. Derrick went joyfully off for shawls and wrappers. Mr. Linden was silent; his eyes had not stirred. But he amused himself with taking some of the violets from the table near by and fastening them in her belt and hair; the very touch of his fingers telling some things he did not.
"Sunbeam, do you feel as if you could bear transportation?"
"Not as a sunbeam. I could walk down, I think," said Faith. Mr. Linden remarked that the truth of that proposition would never be known; and then she was muffled in a large soft shawl, and carried down stairs and laid on the sofa in the sitting-room. The windows were open for the May wind, but there was a dainty little fire still—everything looked strangely familiar; even Mr. Linden; though his face wore not just its most wonted expression. He had laid her down among the cushions and loosened her wrapping shawl, and paid a little attention to the fire; and now stood in Dr. Harrison's favourite place, looking at her,—perhaps trying to see whether she looked more like herself down stairs than she had done above. He could not find that she did. Faith felt as if a great cloud had rolled over and rolled off from her; yet in her very happiness she had a great desire to cry; her weakness of body helped that. Her head lay still upon the cushions with fingers pressed upon her brow. She hardly dared look at Mr. Linden; her eye wandered over less dangerous things; yet it saw him not the less. How sweetly the wind blew.
Mr. Linden went off to the window and picked three or four of the May roses that grew there, and then coming to sit down by Faith's sofa softly pushed one of the buds in between her fingers, and made the rest into a breast knot which he laid on the white folds of her dress. He put other roses in her cheeks then, but it was all done with a curious quietness that covered less quiet things. Faith took the flowers and played with them, venturing scarce a look of answer. With the wasted cheek, the delicate flush on it, and all the stirred fountain of feeling which she was not so able as usual to control, Faith was very lovely; to which effect the roses and violets scattered over her lent a help of their own. Mr. Linden looked at her,—giving now and then a little arranging touch to flowers or hair—with an unbending face, which ended at last in a very full bright smile; though just why it rouged her cheeks so instantly Faith did not feel quite sure. She felt the rouge.
"I am glad you feel like yourself again," she remarked.
"How do you know that I do?"
"I think you look so."
"Quite a mistake. I am only bewitched. That is somewhat like myself, I must own."
Faith's face made a remonstrance, not at all calculated to be successful.
"Please don't bewitch me then!" said Mr. Linden answering the look. "You know I cannot help it—and on the whole you don't wish I could. What do you think of her now, Mrs. Derrick?" he added, getting up to roll the tea-table close to the sofa. The folding of Mrs. Derrick's hands was significant.
"Yes, but you must not look at her so," said Mr. Linden demurely arranging the table and sofa angles in harmonious relation. "You should look with cool unconcern—as I do."
"You!" said Mrs. Derrick. "Well I should like to see that for once."
Faith laughed again, and was ready for her supper after a new fashion from what she had known for many a day past. There is no doubt but cresses and broiled pigeon were good that night!